Conservative pacifism
Sir: Your issue for 6 March carries on the back page an advertisement headed 'Conservative Pacificism'. I gather that it was published anonymously; so that it is not practicable to gauge what position in our society the advertiser occupies.
In that advertisement one par- ticular passage caught my eye. It runs: 'On moral and practical grounds alike it would prefer a risk of suffering ...'
To my mind that is, to put it no more strongly, a palpable under- statement. Under circumstances all too easily envisaged, I would sup- pose that for the majority there would be not just the risk, but the certainty, of suffering, for many grave. And for some the likelihood of death at the hands of the executioner.
To some people such a prospect, if disagreeable, may nevertheless seem acceptable; if the majority (among whom it is to be suspected they number themselves) are to continue in the land of the living even though it may no longer be a very pleasant land. For myself, and I suspect for others as well, such an attitude must be repugnant and, in the last analysis, inhuman.
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